NASA’s 10-day Artemis II mission to fly around the moon safely splashed down off the San Diego coast Friday, marking the end of humanity’s first flight to the moon in over 50 years.

The new NASA administrator, born over a decade after the last Apollo mission, immediately made it clear he intends the gap between Artemis II and the agency’s next moon mission to be much, much shorter.

“You hear sometimes around here, ‘this is a once in a lifetime’ — no its not,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said aboard a recovery vessel out in the Pacific, moments after the crew splashed down. “This is just the beginning, we are going to get back into doing on this with frequency, sending missions to the moon until we land on it in 2028 and start building our base.”

Here’s how the U.S. space agency hopes to do it.

NASA’s vision for the moon

A week before Artemis II launched, NASA outlined its ambitious new plan for creating a sustained presence on the moon, which can serve as a testing ground for eventual missions to Mars.

Most notably, the agency scrapped long-standing plans to build a space station orbiting the moon, called Gateway. Instead, it would focus on building a base on the lunar surface.

“I think we’d rather be on the surface where a lot of the learning’s going to take place, where we can … build the skills, test the technology, the capabilities we’re going to need some day if we actually go to Mars and want to bring our astronauts home to talk about it,” Isaacman said in an interview with the publication NASASpaceflight.

“It’s not like you’re just going to be on Gateway looking down,” he added. “You’re going to probably be looking down on another country’s astronauts.”

The space agency’s Artemis program is designed to make the moon base vision a reality.

The next Artemis missions

The next Artemis mission is slated for 2027. Artemis III will stick in near-Earth orbit — closer to where the International Space Station sits as opposed to traveling into deep space like Artemis II.

Around Earth, the agency plans to test docking procedures between its Orion spacecraft and the lunar landers that will carry astronauts from the moon’s orbit down to its surface. To build these landers, it tapped the private space companies Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, and SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk.

Then, in early 2028, it intends to launch Artemis IV. The Orion spacecraft will carry astronauts to the moon’s orbit, and a lunar lander will take two of them down to the moon’s south pole, where they will spend a week conducting science.

Artemis V and beyond will aim to accelerate the cadence of lunar landings to one every six months and continue to test technology to make lunar landings easier and cheaper.

Lessons from Artemis II

Artemis II focused on putting the Orion spacecraft through its paces — primarily by testing its life support systems and piloting the spacecraft for the first time. For example, the crew dealt with multiple issues with their space toilet.

NASA also used the mission as an opportunity to study Orion’s troubled heat shield, which unexpectedly chipped in more than 100 spots on the uncrewed Artemis I test mission in 2022. By using a new reentry trajectory, Isaacman said that “no unexpected conditions were observed” in initial assessments.

However, the Orion spacecraft experienced issues with helium valves on Orion’s propulsion system, which helps the crew navigate in space. Ahead of launch, NASA noticed helium leaking in the system but determined, since Artemis II has a much simpler trajectory than future missions, the leaking wouldn’t significantly affect the mission.

In space, the leaking worsened, ultimately convincing NASA it would have to redesign the system for future missions.

Beyond the technical objectives of Artemis II, NASA officials were particularly pleased with the public response to the mission and the astronauts’ ability to connect with the public.

The lunar flyby is already NASA’s most viewed live broadcast on YouTube with more than 27 million views. Artemis II’s launch and splashdown are also within the top five most viewed broadcasts.

In space, the astronauts spoke eloquently of the surreal sights of the moon and their deep love for our home planet.

“I would suggest to you that when you look up here, you’re not looking at us,” said Canadian Space Agency astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist astronaut Jeremy Hansen, back in Houston Saturday. “We are a mirror reflecting you. And if you like what you see, then just look a little deeper. This is you.”

The hurdles to Artemis III

NASA is already building its next high-power rocket to launch the Artemis III Orion spacecraft. The agency plans to ship the massive orange core stage for the rocket from New Orleans to Florida this month. The Orion spacecraft’s main two sections are already at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center along the Florida coast.

A redesigned heat shield, aimed at addressing the root cause of the unexpected damage during Artemis I, is already built. However, the agency is not yet sure whether it will be able to fix the faulty Orion propulsion system, built in Germany by the European Space Agency, in Florida or if NASA will have to ship it back across the Atlantic.

And neither SpaceX nor Blue Origin have tested their landers in space yet. A NASA audit last month found that “both SpaceX and Blue Origin have experienced schedule delays and face technical and integration challenges that have the potential to further impact lander costs and delivery schedules.”

Yet, NASA remains steadfast on its 2027 launch timeline. The agency promised to announce the Artemis III crew “soon.”

Four days after astronauts flew around the moon for the first time in a half-century, ground crews across Southern California are making final preparations for their high-energy reentry and splashdown off the coast of San Diego, expected around 5 p.m. Pacific time Friday.

Southern Californians likely won’t be able to see reentry or splashdown in person, NASA officials said. However, NASA will livestream the event. Here’s what you should know:

The four members of the Artemis II crew will rip through the atmosphere at roughly 24,000 mph — over 30 times the speed of sound — agitating the air around the capsule into a fireball roughly half as hot as the surface of the sun.

NASA will use a new, more direct reentry technique, after the heat shield for the 2022 Artemis I test mission, which had no one aboard, unexpectedly chipped in more than 100 spots.

Artemis II pilot and SoCal native Victor Glover has been thinking about reentry since he was assigned the mission in 2023. When Glover, still in space, was asked Wednesday evening about the moments from this mission he’ll carry with him for the rest of his life, he joked: “We’ve still got two more days, and riding a fireball through the atmosphere is profound as well.”

How to watch

“The path we’re coming in, I don’t expect it to be visible for folks in California,” Artemis II Lead Flight Director Jeff Radigan said at a news conference Thursday.

Nonetheless, San Diegans hoping to catch a glimpse can look west over the Pacific around 5 p.m. for the best chance to see the Orion capsule, which would appear as a fast and bright streak low in the sky.

For anyone hoping to get a closer view via boat, “I would caution folks, please avoid the area,” Radigan said. “There’s a lot of debris that comes down, and we work with our recovery forces in order to ensure that it doesn’t hit them. But of course we don’t want it to hit anyone else.”

The last time NASA astronauts splashed down in a brand-new vehicle, lookie-loos caused some serious safety concerns, including potentially exposing boaters to toxic chemicals and delaying the recovery of astronauts if there was an emergency.

For the best, up-close views, NASA is livestreaming reentry and splashdown on YouTube, Netflix and HBO Max. The Times will also carry live views of the dynamic return to Earth on latimes.com.

The San Diego Air & Space Museum will also host a family-friendly viewing party.

The plan for reentry

NASA expects reentry to begin at approximately 4:53 p.m. Pacific time. (Yes, NASA “approximations” are that precise.)

When it does, the agency expects to lose communication for about six minutes as the Orion capsule holding the astronauts is enveloped in a fireball.

During all this, a team of NASA and Department of Defense test pilots will chase the capsule in airplanes as researchers in the back point telescopes and sensors at its heat shield. NASA hopes to use this data to better understand how that protection holds up under the agency’s new reentry technique.

Around 5:03 p.m., two small parachutes will deploy, slowing the craft down to about 300 mph. A minute later, much larger chutes will deploy, slowing the capsule to about 17 mph. Three minutes later, around 5:07 p.m., the capsule will splash down in the Pacific Ocean.

A team of Navy divers will then help the astronauts out of the capsule, and Navy helicopters will swoop in to recover them.

The helicopters will take the astronauts to the U.S.S. John P. Murtha, a 680-foot-long, 25,000-ton Navy transport dock warship, for an immediate medical evaluation. Navy divers will then secure the capsule and guide it to the Murtha’s deck.

Then they’ll bring the astronauts back ashore as the Murtha slowly returns to San Diego. The astronauts will fly to Houston to NASA’s Johnson Space Center to reunite with their families.

Boots on the moon and someday Mars

The Artemis program ultimately aims to land humans back on the moon. NASA eventually hopes to establish a lunar base that will serve as the testing grounds for future missions to Mars.

This mission primarily aimed to test the capsule’s life support systems to help create a smoother ride for future crews that will have to deal with the headaches of actually landing on the moon. This included troubleshooting the capsule’s space toilet (multiple times), piloting the spacecraft by hand, and testing procedures such as sheltering from solar radiation in the cargo locker.

NASA plans to launch Artemis III, a mission in Earth’s orbit to test docking the Orion spacecraft with SpaceX’s and Blue Origin’s lunar landers, in 2027. It aspires to launch Artemis IV, which would put humans on the surface of the moon, in 2028.